Following My Dream

I learned of Peace Corps my freshman year of high school. My favorite math teacher did a short presentation about his experience teaching math in Lesotho, Africa. Engrained in my brain were the images of the town he dedicated two years to. Throughout high school and college, I was eager to travel and have as many experiences as possible, similar to Peace Corps; not only helping throughout the US, but throughout the world. I hoped to someday achieve my dream: to follow my teacher's footsteps; to join the Peace Corps, to teach math, and to travel to africa.

During the summer of 2005, I was selected along with 17 other peers, to travel to Russia to help host a summer camp for Russian orphans. This local non-profit program, Camp Siberia, works to enrich the lives of not only the Russian orphans but the volunteers it sends abroad. Their motto:

Change a life. Change the world.

http://www.campsiberia.org/

The following spring (2006), I traveled to Nicaragua, again with a group of my peers, to an island called Ometepe. As a student enrolled in Spanish classes, I was selected to travel through Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Island Association to live with a host family on Ometepe to build benches and work with the local school children. Living with a host family, not only strengthened my Spanish skills, but also enabled me to become completely immersed into their society and culture.

http://bainbridgeometepe.org/

For the rest of my years in high school, I worked behind the scenes with Camp Siberia as one of two student board members, volunteered with our high school's men's basketball team and tried to involve myself in small local service projects. When I wasn't in school, working or volunteering somewhere my family went on many vacations, domestic and international. All of these experiences growing up taught me a very important value to life: 

Life is about experiences. It doesn't matter what your status is in society, nor does it matter the amount of possessions you own or the amount of money you have. Memories last forever, everything else is temporary. This actually brings us to one of my favorite little stories (I cannot remember where I found this): 

When I was five years old, my mom told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school they asked me to write down what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "happy" and they told 

me that I didn't understand the assignment. I told them they didn't understand life.

During my collegiate career, I continued to donate my time to basketball, working with the LMU men's basketball team daily. Although I wasn't as involved with my local community as I would have liked, I made time to work with my peers on a service project in Tennessee. I also flew to Bonn, Germany to study Mathematics and most recently, traveled with the basketball team to Spain, not only to study but to play basketball and experience the Spanish culture.

LMU Men's Basketball Team in Valencia, Spain

Now, almost 8 years later, with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics, I am eagerly awaiting my invitation to Africa. After receiving my nomination for Peace Corps on May 6, 2011, all I have done is dream of the experiences I will have over the next few years of my life.